Thursday, September 30, 2010

data visualization

So I have an very intense interest in finding clever and creative ways to represent mundane sets of data. Most of this interest was sparked from stumbling up David Mccandless' website Information is Beautiful.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

He's right. Information truly is beautiful. It caused me to pause and think why so many Powerpoints created daily, even at a supposedly creative advertising agency, continue to be dull. The obvious answer being that employees don't have the time to focus on the aesthetics when they need to be providing the data that the client actually cares about. But wait! Spend a little extra time thinking of ways to provide that very same data creatively (and subsequently concisely). Why you may ask? Well with that added time spend on getting your point across creatively, you are now spending less time in meetings convincing clients that your data satisfies your hypotheses. And everyone knows that it's the time in meetings that really matters. I think that even a little extra time spent on formatting and finding new ways to show old points (pie charts...really? barf), that clients and co workers around will be amazed at why they've never paused to look at data the way you do: creatively.

Also check out David's great talk at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization.html